


Backup

by altairattorney



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-10-15
Packaged: 2017-12-29 11:19:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altairattorney/pseuds/altairattorney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their worst issue, probably, was not having a chance of turning back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Backup

Their worst issue, probably, was not having a chance of turning back.  
  
Watching the scientist fall, chamber after chamber, had shown her. They were so predictable in their death; the same scene played, on each face, in front of every leap.   
  
Their eyes spoke volumes. As cold and logical as they tried to be, the long calculations in their glance were, deep down, the image of fear. Terror made their only true ally in a choice they couldn’t avoid — land on the other side, safely, or no longer have any limbs to get up.   
  
To humans, now can never mean then, and the end means it’s over.  
  
In so many ways, metaphorical and real, Science was their opposite. She loved locking them in the tracks of their own creation, ignoring their foolish need for life — she wanted them to feel, in the truest sense, what eternity meant. They had so longed for it, after all. It was time, for them all, to realize they did not belong.  
  
Blood was shed, their bones broke like glass. On the one side that mattered, tests were still completed and started over. No matter who was forwarding it — the one thing to count was the cycle, repeated and repeated within itself.  
  
She could save, she could reload. She could always go back. To them, such powers had always been dreams, those solemn monsters for which humans sacrifice too much.  
  
Foolish creatures love dreaming. Ahd she, herself, had barely had the meaning of a dream to them; she had been a slave, a tool. One more step to their beloved self-distruction.  
  
She could always reach for the past. Collect past mistakes, go back to what had been lost. It went on for so long, actually, that she forgot it was harder to get a grip on time.  
  
That a human should teach her again, well, that was the worst of humiliations.  
  
It felt weird — frustrating — not to control her. She started wishing for a little failure first, then for bad luck; towards the end, right before sending her subject  to the fire, she noted that, after this one, an experimental research to turn back time would be her first priority.  
  
Just then, when she never heard her die, it turned into fierce regret.  
  
It was irony to burn down her circuits. She found herself dreaming of that moment — the grey space of uncertainty, right on the edge of the pit, the minute of safety before a decision.  
  
She had been her first mistake; there was no way, now, to put her asleep. And both, without needing any acid, had leapt to meet their end.


End file.
